


between

by recessional



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 01:36:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2048307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recessional/pseuds/recessional
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke wishes - suddenly, fiercely - that none of the rest of them were here. That only he could see that tiny trembling smile on Rin's face take flight, softening its harsh angles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirenalley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenalley/gifts).



> i haven't written fanfiction in years. go easy on me.

Sousuke takes a long swig from his water bottle and winces when the stale water floods his mouth. A headache already creeps at the edges of his temples, shading the periphery of his vision in gray; a roiling unease has settled into the pit of his stomach. He's a fucking wreck and he's not wearing it well. It's generally a role he leaves up to Rin, after all.

"Are you alright, senpai?" Nitori asks him, peering up through the fringe of his hair. Mikoshiba looks back over his shoulder, caught mid-sentence. Their first prefectural meet begins in an hour; Rin has already gone ahead to make sure everything is in place for the team. 

Hilarious, isn't he? Sousuke had never been more clear-headed than the moment before his big day, the day before his sixteenth birthday, when afterwards he'd been approached by three different scouts from the top three swimming universities in Japan. He'd swum, he'd shone, he'd beaten everyone else, and that had been that. The simplicity of victory. The power of individual hard work.

Sousuke rolls his shoulders, the fabric of his Samezuka jacket pulled taut by the motion. "Piece of cake. Let's go."

This time, though, he's not swimming for himself.

\--

The sun doesn't even have the good sense to keep its face shrouded today, of all days. Sousuke is sweating under the heavy wool of the only formal black jacket that he owns, his hands barely visible beyond the cuffs. 

He's given up trying to roll the cuffs up.

"Hey. Sousuke." Rin puts out a fist, fingers curled downwards. He smiles with his teeth clenched, with a smear of moisture across his cheek that catches the light as he cants forward to bump his fist against Sousuke's shoulder when Sousuke doesn't respond to the proffered attempt at levity. "Hey. Feel like joining a club? I'm president, but you can be my right hand man." Rin noses closer, his knees bumping against Sousuke's. "Getting in sucks _balls_ , but -" 

Rin is wearing a garish purple parka over his suit jacket. It's too big in the shoulders. Sousuke's gaze has latched to the hem, where the purple polyester gives way to black lining. It looks warm. 

"-I'm here, aren't I? I started it! That means it's gotta be cool."

Sousuke keeps his silence, though it smolders painfully in his chest. Everything is too big and too bright; he feels more like a child than he ever has. Rin's horrible parka is too colorful. The grass beneath him, peppered with weeds and little yellow flowers, bites into his exposed ankles, flickering against his skin with every errant pulse of the wind. 

"Rin," Sousuke says, eleven years old and sleepy-eyed. He's still too young to understand why he can't just step backwards and run in the opposite direction, until he can envelope himself in his father's warm shadow and forget -- forget -- 

(His mother, hair pulled back from her face, hands cupped over her face. His lungs are full of the smell of incense, pine and plumwood. Jasmine, maybe. Sousuke coughs into his elbow, his eyes burning.)

"Sousuke," Rin replies, smiling so wide that the rest of him becomes inconsequential in comparison. The garish purple parka, invisible. His stark red hair, his stern little chin. Gone. All that's left is that row of strangely pointed teeth, closing around the sound of Sousuke's name. He's been crying, Sousuke realizes, all of a sudden. Idiot Rin, crying for everything. That's why his cheeks are shining. That's why he's speaking on an undertone, his breath hitching like a girl's. "It's called the dead dad's club."

(They're friends. Friends who eat lunch together, swim together, study together. The kind of friends who sit at each other's kitchen tables and eat each other's snacks and steal cans of cola together when their mothers aren't looking. They have a clubhouse out behind the park by the station, beyond the branches of an old birch that had been struck down in a storm a few years ago.)

"Wanna join?" Rin asks, leaning into Sousuke's space. His narrow shoulders trembling, his smile bright and brighter and too bright for Sousuke to keep staring at. Idiot Rin, crying for _Sousuke's_ dad, as if he has any right. As if he understands anything. As if he could shove himself into Sousuke's space and eat all of Sousuke's favorite ice cream _just because Sousuke always lets him_ and smile at him as if he knows something that Sousuke's doesn't. Idiot Rin, making a joke out of a loss of such great magnitude that Sousuke can't measure it with his own child-sized heart.

Idiot Rin, crying when Sousuke was trying so hard not to cry himself.

Night falls gently, the color bleeding out from the sky -- a palette of watercolors turned on its side, the colors all mixing together. Until everything becomes a nondescript gray. 

Sousuke bows his head. He's thinking about the doorway to his room, where he'd seen his father last. His mouth tastes sour. 

And then, finally, finally -- the sobs are clawing out of his throat, leaving him ragged and damp and terrified. Rin says nothing, but Sousuke can feel the bright perpetuity of his smile turned upon him. A spotlight cutting through the darkness.

"I'll bring snacks to the first meeting," says Rin, and he's crying, too.

That's when it starts. 

\--

"Ice cream! Ice cream ice cream ice cream!" Mikoshiba is literally bouncing down the street, shouting loud enough that a few people actually cross to the other side of the road to avoid encountering him. "Rin-senpai's treat!"

"Momo-kun..." Nitori tries, trailing off.

"Hey," Rin growls. He's wearing his hood over his head, but Sousuke doesn't need to see his expression to know that he's leveling a glare in Mikoshiba's direction. "Who said anything about ice cream? And why the hell would I pay for yours? Don't let all our training go to waste."

Mikoshiba manages to pout audibly. Nitori looks between Rin and Mikoshiba for a moment, helpless. Then his gaze darts to Sousuke. 

Sousuke catches the look. He shrugs.

Before he can do anything more than that, a wave of elementary students trail by, shouting; Rin irritably herds Mikoshiba forward to avoid any unfortunate collisions. Sousuke watches him, as Sousuke is always watching him: how easily he throws an arm around Mikoshiba to shove him forward. His hands, one anchored against Mikoshiba's shoulder, the other shoved into his hair. Rin's affection is a clumsy thing, alive only in the implications, the aftermoments. 

The sun beats down, relentless. Rin would already have been scorched red if Sousuke hadn't reminded him to wear the thin tracksuit jacket - with its hood - over his t-shirt. 

"Once in a while is alright, don't you think?" Sousuke says, and maybe he's just disturbing the peace so that Rin will turn that glare on him instead. 

"Yeah! Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, Yamazaki-senpai's treat!" 

"Hey!"

Rin isn't glaring. Rin's smiling, head bowed to hide the expression under the fall of his hood. Maybe he manages to hide it from the underclassmen, but Sousuke's been chasing down silver-lined moments like this for as long as he can remember. He doesn't miss it.

\--

 

"This isn't how it works," Rin says, frustrated. 

"Senpai--" Nitori starts, then he cuts himself off. What confidence he's gained in the months since Sousuke has known him always seems to either rally forth unimpeded or disappear entirely when it comes to Rin's occasional bouts into violent negativity. 

That's Rin for you. Affecting everyone around him even when he's doing nothing more productive than curling wild-eyed over his own insecurities. Sousuke thinks about lifting him up by the collar and tossing him into the pool to cool his head, but the pool is undergoing maintenance for the night. It's been emptied.

Knowing Rin, though, a bit of time spent in the empty basin of the pool might be more helpful than anything else.

"Maybe you should go, Nitori," Sousuke says, low in his throat. His gaze belongs to Rin, as does the too-quiet cast of his voice. 

Nitori hesitates, looking to Rin. Still, regardless of whatever strange neuroses the kid suffers from, he's damn good at reading Rin; he excuses himself and closes the clubroom door behind him before Sousuke can rephrase his suggestion into a demand. 

"Shut up, Sousuke. You wouldn't understand."

Sousuke hasn't said anything. 

His patience can't endure the constant unraveling. He stood silent for years, paving paths and clearing obstacles before Rin even knew to check for them. He's made his own story secondary to that which stands before him: not only the curve of Rin's throat, the darkness of his eyes, but to the memory of a wide grinning mouth closing about his name. For a club that he'd never really wanted to join.

"I do," he says, and there must be something darker in his voice than he'd intended, because Rin is looking up at him, expression smudged over. Sousuke's mouth goes dry, but he's not ready to give this one up. "I came to Samezuka for you. You think I don't understand what it means to swim for somebody else? You're not the only one who's changed, Rin."

All of this, just because Nanase decided not to pursue professional swimming. 

All of this. For Nanase.

They end up curled into the far end of the pool, only the faint light from the streetlights illuminating the darkness. Sousuke sprawls, taking up room, nudging Rin's thigh with his foot. They don't talk. 

\--

Sousuke's hands are in Rin's hair. Rin, who is sprawled over the top bunk, mouth parted, wearing one of Sousuke's t-shirts and little else. It's too large for him; the fabric pools around him, making him look too young. Wrong, somehow. Sousuke's fingers slide through the strands of red hair, oddly cool to the touch despite the fiery color. His fingertips come away stained blood-red. He can't help it; he brings them to his mouth to see if he can taste that hot sweet flame, if he can find Rin somewhere beneath the callouses of his own fingertips -- 

There's an eclipse overhead. Rin is silhouetted in red and gold, the colors streaming out from behind him like strange shifting wings. Sousuke curls a hand about Rin's hip, the jut of bone fitting into his palm like RIn was crafted for this alone: to be held in the cradle of Sousuke's hands, to stitch his shadow into the fabric of Sousuke's own, so Sousuke's hands would remain stained that blood-flame-Rin color no matter how many times he washed it away. 

The moon slides over the sun. Sousuke breathes in, hot embers catching in his lungs. Rin is on his knees before him, mouth stretched wide around Sousuke's dick. His hair is on fire, the flame casting a wavering shadow over Rin's cheeks. Sousuke's heart is on fire, liquid flame that sluices through him to every vein and tiny capillary in his body. And Sousuke's hands slide further into Rin's hair, stained red. He's whispering. He's losing all color but that of Rin's hair and eyes and the wicked red curve of his mouth -- 

Rin. 

Sousuke's hips drive forward, again and again. Strands of hair come loose in his hands, but he can't stop, not when Rin is closing his eyes and moaning around the width of Sousuke's dick, as if he has wanted nothing more in all of his life than to drop to his knees and drink down everything Sousuke has to give. No, Sousuke can't slow down, can't stop, can't breathe: all he can do is hiss Rin's name and fuck his face. Again. Again. Until his hands are full of strands of hair that he's yanked free, until there's blood caked under his fingernails. Rin sucks him down. Swallows him whole.

Sousuke wakes up. He's slumped over his desk in the middle of his homeroom, sporting a hard-on that's probably visible from space. It takes a moment for him to find his bearings: he scrubs at his eyes, runs a hand over his mouth, stares down at the face of his phone. 4:23pm. Ah. Right. The cultural festival approaches, and class 3-1 had decided to put together a haunted house -- unfortunately, the committee elected to run the operation has proved to be entirely nonfunctional. Sousuke had reluctantly stayed behind to help out. 

Apparently he'd been tired enough to doze off while the rest of the committee argued semantics.

One of the members of said committee, a tow-headed asshole named Niwa, stands over him now, grinning like he's about to ruin Sousuke's life. Timid Togawa is peering over the rim of his spectacles, his eyebrows raised.

"You were whimpering in your sleep, Yamazaki. Nightmares, huh?" His grin deepens. "Do you still wet the bed, too?"

Sousuke casually leans back in his desk chair, spreading his legs wide. His cock is pressed up against his abdomen; every shift of his body is an agonizing thrill. "Nah. Dreamed that I woke up with your face, though. I wanted to die."

Togawa laughs before Niwa can offer a retort, and that's all that Sousuke needs to wind the conversation away from himself. 

(It's the first time he dreams of Rin's body opening for his own, sweet and pliant as the real Rin never is. It's not the last.)

Later, when Sousuke hunches over his textbook with his earbuds lodged into his ears, he nearly misses the contemplative look that Rin gives him. 

"Niwa told me you fell asleep at the cultural festival planning thing today," Rin says, his expression shifting to amused neutrality when he realizes that Sousuke is watching him in turn. "Turning into an old man already, huh?"

"An old man who can bench fifty more than you can," Sousuke shoots back. 

"Fuck off, Godzilla," Rin says, but he's grinning. 

Later, even later, when Sousuke's lying in bed, waiting for sleep to come - not knowing whether to dread the dreams that might follow -- Rin's voice curls up through the darkness, as soft and insubstantial as smoke. The sound of it makes Sousuke want to clamber down from his bunk and to shove his dick into the loose curve of Rin's mouth -- to see if his tongue would leave soot-marks on the head of Sousuke's dick. 

He's going fucking crazy.

"I'm not pushing you - the team - too hard, am I?"

"No." Sousuke says, slipping a hand down the front of his pants. His heart is pounding against his ribcage, too loud, too quick. "You trust me, don't you? I'd tell you if I thought otherwise."

Rin doesn't answer, but the silence between them is an old friend. 

\--

"Sousuke-kun! Are you even trying?" 

It's the end of January, one of the longest days of the year, and Sousuke has bundled himself in two scarves and a heavy coat. Gou is a flutter of color at his side, tapping her fingernails against the cheap laminated tabletop. They're sitting in a tiny coffeeshop near Samezuka that Gou has taken to frequenting. Sousuke doesn't really understand why she likes it so much - it's overpriced and overly trendy - but he has a soft spot for Gou nearly as crippling as Rin's. It's a curse. He'll meet her wherever she wants.

Sousuke snorts. "How about I challenge him to a race? He'll enjoy that best."

Gou makes an angry sound. The effect is rather similar to a small kitten hissing. Sousuke has the sudden urge to scratch behind her ear; thankfully, he's been around the Matsuoka clan for long enough that he's developed a healthy sense of self-preservation. He keeps his hands to himself. 

"That's not even a gift! You're the one who knows him best, aren't you? Think harder!" 

Rin has never put much stock in birthdays, is what Sousuke doesn't tell her. Gou hasn't celebrated her elder brother's birthday together with him in a long time -- she's excited about it, understandably so. How can he tell her that Rin has _already_ started to devolve into existential angst, even though his birthday is still a week off? 

_Why do we even celebrate birthdays, anyway?_ Rin's little _tch_ of irritation, punctuated by the grim slash of his mouth. _I have better things to do. The next major tournament is coming up in hardly a week, and I'd rather spend the day training with the team. Don't do anything dumb. Don't let Ai do anything dumb, either._

Sousuke takes a sip from his mug of tea. "How about a surprise party?" he says, a lazy smile spreading across his face. "You can even invite Nanase and the others, if you want. Order a steak instead of a cake. He'll love it."

Rin stares at his feet with his eyebrows drawn together, a fine tremble working down his spine. Sousuke stands behind him, close enough to feel the suggestion of a tremor. Confused and approaching concerned, he reaches out to curl a hand about Rin's shoulder -- and then, just like that, he's laughing. Rin Matsuoka, Samezuka captain from hell, architect of training menus designed to kill, is turning and blinking away tears at the sight of his sister and the four Iwatobi idiots jumping out from various not-so-hidden hiding spots in the Samezuka gym. Nitori is bringing out a steaming platter full of what looks like a charred remnant of a steak, with Mikoshiba trailing behind him and shouting. 

But Rin is smiling under his damp lashes, and Sousuke's thinking about inevitabilities and the way Rin plucks at the hem of his jacket. He wants to dip down and tuck his face against Rin's throat, so that he can feel each trembling swallow, each skittering beat of his heart. 

"It was Sousuke's idea!" Gou says, voice pitched loudly so that she can be heard over the general ruckus. Rin punches Sousuke in the shoulder, muttering something along the lines of _didn't I tell you not to -- ?_. 

Sousuke wishes - suddenly, fiercely - that none of the rest of them were here. That only he could see that tiny trembling smile on Rin's face take flight, softening its harsh angles. Sousuke wants to slide into Rin's space, taking all of that embarrassment and gratitude and _love_ and tucking it into his own heart. 

\--

This is how it starts to unwind. 

\--

Rin is a flurry of limbs and laughter in the ocean tides, swimming ahead of Sousuke with wild strokes, unmistakably bright even in the shadow of nightfall. Sousuke follows, unbidden, even when the water loses its daytime-warmth and fastens its cold salty fingers about his bones. 

They race into the waves, tumbling like nascent sea-creatures over one another. Sousuke catches hold of Rin's ankle and tugs him under, releasing him only when Rin elbows him in the face. 

They graduated yesterday. Afterwards, they bought their train tickets to Tokyo together, hovering over the same laptop screen, Sousuke reading off his credit card number for Rin to type in. They're going to the same university, scouted by the same program, the red carpet already beginning to unfurl in their direction. 

"Too slow!" Rin shouts, darting away from Sousuke's attempt at wrestling him down to the sand. 

Sousuke's heart is full to bursting. He feels invincible, untouchable. Rin dances out of his reach, laughing, Sousuke's name in his mouth. In the moonlight, he looks like a creature from mythology, wet skin cast in silver, the knobs of his spine delicate under his skin. Sousuke wants to stroke his hands down that long curve until he can slip past the waistband of Rin's legskins and grab a handful of his ass. 

And maybe it's because he's succeeded, knocking out Nanase and the entirety of the rest of the world in the doing so, that Sousuke finds his courage. The next time he lunges, he catches Rin by the wrists, dropping him to the bed of sand below with danger glinting sharp in his pale eyes. 

"Rin," Sousuke says, when Rin is a wide-eyed shock of crimson below him, body spread out for the taking. Sousuke is thinking about incense like pine and plumwood and jasmine. He's thinking of how big his hands are about Rin's wrists; how easy it would be to snap bone and sinew in the flex of his fingers. 

"Rin," he says again, urgently. Rin's smile is fading, alarm edging into its place. Rin is the one who doesn't understand. Here he is, white flesh and parted lips, and Sousuke's already so hard that he's started to go light-headed. 

"What the hell, Sousuke," Rin murmurs, but he doesn't struggle against Sousuke's grip on him. "You okay? Should we head back?"

"No." Sousuke has left his levity by the wayside for the waves to drag away; in its place is a terrifying singularity of focus. And then he smiles. "Close your eyes, Rin. I have a surprise for you." 

Rin obeys, but only after a long moment of hesitation. "I swear, if this is some dumb prank --"

Sousuke kisses him. 

\--

Rin's ass clenches about him like a glove, kneading him from base to tip. Sousuke is panting, sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat. 

"That all you got?"

Rin has been goading him for the past thirty minutes. Sousuke finally shoved him onto his hands and knees and started fucking him from behind. Only so he didn't have to see that tilted brow, the grin that meant another challenge that he couldn't refuse. But sometimes Rin asks for more than he can give: a little too much violence, a little too much distance from his heart, and this is Sousuke's way of dealing with it. By taking and taking and taking from Rin until he has no breath left to ask for anything else. 

Sousuke shoves his dick deeper and deeper still, eyes flaring at the punched-out sound that Rin makes in response. 

"Isn't that what you wanted, Rin?" Sousuke picks up the pace, his balls slapping up against the back of Rin's thighs with every subsequent thrust. "Then take it. Take it until you don't remember what it's like to live without my dick in you." 

"Sousuke," Rin moans, brokenly. "Fuck you. Do it - I want it. Harder." 

"Greedy," Sousuke says, but he's slipped up, he's broken character -- there's too much fondness in his tone. Rin is clenching about him anew, his back muscles rippling beautifully. Sousuke parts of the globes of his ass with his thumbs, just so he can see the red stretch of Rin's hole around his dick. "Your ass is always so greedy. Once isn't going to be enough for you, is it?" 

Rin's screwing himself back onto every flex of Sousuke's hips, moaning loudly, shamelessly. There's blood on his lips, blood on his teeth. Sousuke wants his dick in Rin's mouth next, when they've recovered from this round -- he wants to see Rin looking up at him through clumped lashes, his mouth streaked with drying blood. He wants - he wants -- 

"Rin," Sousuke says, when Rin's crying out and reaching under himself to jerk frantically at his own dick. He's curling forward into the grip of his own fist, and Sousuke goes with him, fitting his body about Rin's. He's going to come. He wants to spray across Rin's back, to see the evidence of his own release sticky on Rin's skin. 

"Rin," Sousuke says, because it's been ten years since Rin smiled at him with his heart in his hands and invited him to the goddamn dead dad's club. Because Rin is twisting in his arms, recognizing the waver in Sousuke's voice before Sousuke himself does. 

"You piece of shit," Rin says, his voice in tatters. He's smiling, teeth on full radiant display, his cheeks flushed dark. "Are you _crying_?"

"I love you," Sousuke says, because it's a truth as inevitable as the pull of the tides, or the sleepy fall of late-afternoon sunlight. Because he's said it a hundred times in the past, and the words still roll off his tongue. He needs to say it just as much as Rin needs to hear it.

"Yeah," Rin says, soft. "Asshole."

\--

"Wanna race me in butterfly? It's my specialty!" says the boy from the swim club, all red hair and red eyes and big wide ridiculous toothy smiles.

Sousuke rocks back on his heels, considering. He's nine years old. Freckles on his shoulders. 

He grins. 

"Get ready to lose, Matsuoka."


End file.
